AT Participation Income CP - Michigan 7 2023 CFMP

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Perm
PDCP
‘Basic income’ is universally paid, with exceptions.
Parijs ’4 [Philippe Van Parijs; March 2004; Belgian political philosopher and political economist, best known as a proponent and main defender of the concept of an unconditional basic income; Politics & Society, “Basic Income: A Simple and Powerful Idea for the Twenty-First Century,” vol. 32, no. 1]
WHAT BASIC INCOME IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT
A basic income is an income paid by a political community to all its members on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement. This is the definition I shall adopt. It does not fit all actual uses of the English expression “basic income,” or of its most common translations into other European languages, such as Bürgergeld, allocation universelle,renta básica,reddito di cittadinanza, basisinkomen, or borgerlon. Some of these actual uses are broader: they also cover, for example, benefits whose level is affected by one’s household situation or that are administered in the form of tax credits. Other uses are narrower: they also require, for example, that the level of the basic income should match what is required to satisfy basic needs or that it should replace all other transfers. The aim of the above definition is not to police usage but to clarify arguments. Let us briefly focus on each of its components in turn.
An Income
Paid in cash, rather than in kind. One can conceive of a benefit that would have all other features of a basic income but be provided in kind, for example, in the form of a standardized bundle of food or the use of a plot of land. Or it could be provided in the form of a special currency with restricted uses, for example, food stamps or housing grants, or more broadly consumption in the current period only without any possibility of saving it, as in Jacques Duboin’s “distributive economy.”1 A basic income, instead, is provided in cash, without any restriction as to the nature or timing of the consumption or investment it helps fund. In most variants, it supplements, rather than substitutes, existing in-kind transfers such as free education or basic health insurance.
Paid on a regular basis, rather than as a one-off endowment. A basic income consists in purchasing power provided at regular intervals, such as a week, a month, a term, or a year, depending on the proposal. One can also conceive of a benefit that would have all other features of a basic income but be provided on a one-off basis, for example, at the beginning of adult life. This has occasionally been proposed,2 for example, long ago (1796) by Thomas Paine3 and far more recently by Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott.4 There is a significant difference between a regular basic income and such a basic endowment. Yet it should not be overstated. Firstly, the basic endowment can be invested to generate an actuarially equivalent annual or monthly income up to the recipient’s death, which would amount to a regular basic income. If left to the insurance market, the level of this annuity would be negatively affected by the length of a person’s life expectancy. Women, for example, would receive a lower annuity than men. However, the advocates of a basic endowment (including Paine and Ackerman and Alstott) usually supplement it with a uniform basic pension from a certain age, which erases most of this difference. Secondly, while other uses can be made of a basic endowment than turning it into an annuity, the resulting difference with a basic income would be essentially annulled if the latter’s recipients could freely borrow against their future basic income stream. Even if one wisely protects basic income against seizure by creditors, the security it provides will make it easier for its beneficiaries to take loans at every stage and will thereby reduce the gap between the ranges of options opened, respectively, by a one-off basic endowment and a regular basic income.
Paid by a Political Community
By definition, a basic income is paid by a government of some sort out of publicly controlled resources. But it need not be paid by a Nation-state. Nor does it need to be paid out of redistributive taxation.
The Nation-state, beneath and beyond. In most proposals, the basic income is supposed to be paid, and therefore funded, at the level of a Nation-state, as sometimes indicated by the very choice of such labels as “state bonus,” “national dividend,” or “citizen’s wage.” However, it can in principle also be paid and funded at the level of a politically organised part of a Nation-state, such as a province or a commune. Indeed, the only political unit that has ever introduced a genuine basic income, as defined, is the state of Alaska in the United States.5 A basic income can also conceivably be paid by a supra-national political unit. Several proposals have been made at the level of the European Union6 and some, more speculatively, at the level of the United Nations.7
Redistribution. The basic income may but need not be funded in a specific, earmarked way. If it is not, it is simply funded along with all other government expenditures out of a common pool of revenues from a variety of sources. Among those who advocated earmarked funding, most are thinking of a specific tax. Some want it funded out of a land tax or a tax on natural resources—from Thomas Paine8 and Joseph Charlier9 to Raymond Crotty,10 Marc Davidson,11 or James Robertson,12 for example. Others prefer a specific levy on a very broadly defined income base13 or a massively expanded value-added tax.14 And some of those who are thinking of a worldwide basic income stress the potential of new tax instruments such as “Tobin taxes” on speculative capital movements15 or “bit taxes” on transfers of information.16
Distribution. Redistributive taxation, however, need not be the only source of funding. Alaska’s dividend scheme17 is funded out of part of the return on a diversified investment fund that the state built up using the royalties on Alaska’s vast oil fields. In the same vein, James Meade’s18 blueprint of a fair and efficient economy comprises a social dividend funded out of the return on publicly owned productive assets. Finally, there has been a whole sequence of proposals to fund a basic income out of money creation, from Major Douglas’s Social Credit movement19 and Jacques and Marie-Louise Duboin’s Mouvement français pour l’abondance20 to the more sophisticated (and more modest) proposals of Joseph Huber.
To All Its Members
Non-citizens? There can be more or less inclusive conceptions of the membership of a political community. Some, especially among those who prefer the label “citizen’s income,” conceive of membership as restricted to nationals, or citizens in a legal sense. The right to a basic income is then of a piece with the whole package of rights and duties associated with full citizenship, as in the conception of the French philosopher Jean-Marc Ferry.22 Most advocates of basic income, however, especially among those who view it as a policy against exclusion, do not want a restrictive entitlement to basic income to further deepen the dualisation of the labour market. They therefore tend to conceive of membership in a broader sense that tends to include all legal permanent residents. The operational criterion may be, for non-citizens, a minimum length of past residence, or it may simply be provided by the conditions that currently define residence for tax purposes, or some combination of both.
Children? There can also be a more or less inclusive conception of membership along the age dimension. Some restrict basic income, by definition, to adult members of the population but then tend to propose it side by side with a universal, that is, non-means-tested, child benefit system, with a level of benefit that may or may not be differentiated as a (positive or negative) function of the rank of the child or as a (positive) function of the child’s age. Others conceive of basic income as an entitlement from the first to the last breath and therefore view it as a full substitute for the child benefit system. The level of the benefit then needs to be independent of the child’s family situation, in particular of his or her rank. Some also want it to be the same as for adults, and hence independent of age, as is actually the case in the modest Alaskan dividend scheme and as would be the case under some more generous proposals.23 But the majority of those who propose an integration of child benefits into the basic income scheme differentiate the latter’s level according to age, with the maximum level not being granted until majority, or later.
Pensioners? Analogously, some restrict basic income to members of the population who have not reached retirement age and then see it as a natural complement to an individual, non-means-tested, non-contributory basic pension pitched at a higher level, of a sort that already exists in some European countries, like Sweden or the Netherlands. In most proposals, however, the basic income is granted beyond retirement age, either at the same level as for younger adults or at a somewhat higher level. In all cases, this basic income for the elderly can be supplemented by income from public or private contributory pension schemes, as well as from private savings and from employment.
Inmates? Even on the most inclusive definition of the relevant notion of membership, any population is still likely to contain some people who will not be paid a basic income. Detaining criminals in prison is far more expensive to the community than paying them a modest basic income, even if full account is taken of any productive work they may be made to perform. Unless the detention turns out to have been ill-founded, it is therefore obvious that prison inmates should lose the benefit of their basic income for the duration of their imprisonment. But they can get it back as soon as they are released. The same may apply to the long-term inmates of other institutions, such as madhouses or old people’s homes, to the extent that the full cost of their stay is directly picked up by the community rather than paid for by the inmates themselves.
Universality is impossible for a BIG—alternatives create infinite PICs out of migrants or asylum seekers
Miller ’17 [Annie; 2017; spent the major part of her working life in the Department of Economics at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh teaching mainly business economics, econometrics, mathematics and statistics for economists, in 1984, Annie was a co-founder of the Basic Income Research Group (BIRG), which changed its name in 1993 to the Citizen’s Income Trust (CIT), where she has been a trustee since 1989 and is currently its Chair, contributes regularly to its Citizen’s Income Newsletter and gives talks to groups around the UK, and has presented papers on BI at conferences here in the UK, on the continent and in North America; “Migration – and giving a BI to rich people,” A Basic Income Handbook, Luath Press Limited: Edinburgh]
efining the population
ALTHOUGH IT IS claimed that universality is a defining feature of a BI scheme, it cannot exist in reality. Atkinson (2015: 221) argues that ‘A universal income is… a chimera. Any actual scheme would involve a condition of eligibility and hence the risk of exclusion’. The population must be defined, and eligibility criteria are required. These are likely to be based on a combination of geographical area and legal, including citizenship, rights, so that recipients can be identified. This will inevitably exclude some people and needs to be addressed, whatever income maintenance system is adopted.
Torry points out that ‘citizenship’ is a multifaceted concept, involving civil, political, social and economic rights and duties, and involving rights and duties in relation to cultural, local, national, regional and global levels’ (Torry, 2013: 209). For BI purposes, it should be defined in an inclusive way.
The Citizen’s Income Trust (CIT) (2015: 5) states ‘citizenship becomes the basis of entitlement, subject to a minimum period of legal residency in the UK, and continuing residence in the UK for most of the year’ (italics in original). CIT’s definition of citizenship is based on the legal right to permanent residence in the UK.
Thus, a BI scheme in a country could be paid as a right of citizenship, for those:
• With the legal right to permanent residence in the country; and
• Who have fulfilled a minimum period of continuous legal residency in the country prior to the commencement of payment; and
• Who maintain a continuing physical presence in the country for most of each subsequent year, while in receipt of the BI.
It soon becomes clear that the design and administration of a universal BI scheme could be more problematic than at first thought. This is discussed in more detail in chapter 8.
Criteria would also be needed to address specific residence situations to stipulate the conditions in which the following four groups of people are included:
• People who have the legal right to permanent residence in the UK, but who have relocated abroad, and so have not exercised that right for certain periods in their lives;
• Migrants to the UK from parts of the EU, depending on the UK’s relationship with the EU;
• Asylum seekers who seek refugee status on account of persecution, war or natural disasters in their own countries; and
• Other migrants who do not fall within any of the above categories.
Their definition is arbitrary, unpredictable and distorts the literature base
Kate McFarland, 17 - lead news writer for the Basic Income Earth Network, “Relaxing Conditions on ‘Basic Income’: A Case Against Definition” 10/23, https://basicincome.org/news/2017/10/relaxing-conditions-on-basic-income-a-case-against-definition/
Italics in original
From a linguistic standpoint, there is no one “correct” definition of the term ‘basic income’ [1]. Different groups and organizations have adopted different definitions, suitable to their purposes, and these definitions sometimes conflict with one another.
BIEN, at present, coordinates affiliates who use the term differently from one another, organizes conferences to bring together individuals who use the term differently from one another, and issues news reports on varied stories in which the term is used in different ways.
I have come to believe that, in its role as such an umbrella organization, BIEN’s attempt to define ‘basic income’ does not lend clarity. Instead, to avoid equivocation and confusion, it would do better to admit upfront this diversity in definition and shades of meaning.
BIEN’s Definition of ‘Basic Income’: One Among Many
At its 2016 Congress in Seoul, BIEN adopted the following definition: “A basic income is a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement.”
When I write for BIEN’s website, I accept this as a stipulative definition of the term, and call attention to potentially confusing differences in usage. For example, when I report on the recently launched “basic income pilot” in Ontario, I note that the program being tested–in which payments to participants are household-based and income-dependent–does not actually satisfy BIEN’s definition of ‘basic income’ (although, as I emphasize below, it does congeal with an established and widespread use of the term within Canada).
My comments in might sometimes seem to treat BIEN’s definition as privileged or authoritative. This, however, is only an artifact of the particular context in which I am writing–BIEN’s website–and my desire to maintain consistency within this context. I do not believe that BIEN’s definition is privileged in any absolute or objective sense, or that it is more “correct” than other uses that have become established within other groups, organizations, and geographical regions.
As I take it, my prevailing duty as a news writer is to prevent readers from believing false things. In this context, clarity and consistency in meaning are of utmost importance, and BIEN’s definition of ‘basic income’ is a burden I must bear, knowing that there will be many situations in which it will be inconsistent with the definitions employed by the parties on whom I report.
Two particularly important cases, in my experience, are the following two types of definitions:
Definitions that additionally stipulate that the amount of the periodic cash payment must be sufficient to meet basic living expenses.
Definitions that lack the qualification that the payment must be (a) non-withdrawable (not means-tested) and/or (b) paid on an individual basis.
A. Definitions stipulating that the amount of the periodic cash payment must be sufficient to meet basic living expenses.
Many high-profile groups and organizations have adopted definitions of ‘basic income’ with this additional necessary condition (philosophers may enjoy the opportunity to say that, on these definitions, “the ‘sufficient’ condition is a necessary condition”); for example (emphases added):
GiveDirectly, the charity organization known in the basic income community for its impending major experiment in Kenya, defines ‘basic income’ as a type of cash transfer that is “unconditional (recipients don’t have to work or do anything else to be eligible), universal, with all members of society receiving, enough to cover basic needs, and guaranteed for the recipients’ lifetimes”.
International Basic Income Week, an annual initiative that is pursuing partnership with BIEN in 2018, stresses four conditions that must be met to use ‘basic income’ to refer to a cash transfer policy: payments must be (1) universal, (2) individual, (3) unconditional, and (4) high enough.
Founding members of the Economic Security Project, a major US-based initiative launched in late 2016, have decided to reserve the use of ‘basic income’ for programs in which payments are high enough to meet basic living expenses, and have endorsed the neologism ‘base income’ to refer to programs that provide universal and unconditional payments of lesser amount.
Multiple affiliates of BIEN–including groups in Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and Switzerland, and perhaps others–have adopted definitions of ‘basic income’ (or its translational equivalent) that include some type of condition specifying that the amount of payment must be “sufficient” or “high enough” to meet some type of minimal needs (see “Affiliate Definitions of ‘Basic Income’”).
The question of whether BIEN itself should include the sufficiency condition as a necessary condition (so to speak) has been the cause of previous terminological controversies within the organization, including the one that eventuated in the vote at the 2016 Congress in Seoul, in which BIEN rejected the proposal to restrict the definition of ‘basic income’ in such a manner. In a paper delivered at the 2017 BIEN Congress (“What’s a Definition? And how should we define ‘Basic Income’?”), Malcolm Torry, General Manager of BIEN and Director of the UK’s Citizen’s Basic Income Trust, defends this decision. According to Torry, the adopted definition does not “conflict with any affiliate’s definition”, “represent[s] the consensus among affiliates”, and “reflect[s] common usage of the term”.
All of these claims seem dubious, however, especially when one considers that BIEN has aspired to provide a definition–that is, a set of necessary and sufficient conditions to use the term ‘basic income’–rather than a non-exclusive list of necessary or paradigmatic features.
First, notice that the different definitions of BIEN and some of its affiliates lead to different assignments of truth and falsity to certain sentences. For example, the sentences ‘Alaska has a basic income’ and ‘Iran once implemented a basic income’ seem to be true on BIEN’s definition [2], but they are false on definitions of ‘basic income’ that include a provision that the amount must be high enoug

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